Toronto Maple Leafs unsure about James van Riemsdyk's injury

James van Riemsdyk, who missed Tuesday night’s game with a mysterious upper-body injury, skated briefly at practice on Wednesday. But it is still not clear how or when the Toronto Maple Leafs forward got hurt or whether he will be in the lineup Thursday night against the Carolina Hurricanes.

“Again, there’s improvement but we’ll see if he’s available for us tomorrow night,” Leafs head coach Randy Carlyle said. “Hopefully after another 24 hours and treatments, he’ll be back.”

Van Riemsdyk is tied with a team-leading five goals in six games and is second amongst forwards in average ice time (21 minutes and 38 seconds per game).

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Kessel has taken more shots than anyone else on the team this season. But the sniper was praised for his unselfishness after allowing Mason Raymond to score an empty-net goal in Tuesday’s 4-1 win against the Minnesota Wild by not redirecting what looked to be a pass attempt.

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“It’s a classy move, right?” said Raymond, who has four goals. “It’s a very, very classy move, a nice gesture for a teammate. Again, I was fully anticipating he was going to shoot the puck in the net. He was going down the middle of the ice, he was skating into the puck, so yeah it was a classy gesture on his part.”

Kessel, who has two goals this season, received a point on the play for his team-leading sixth assist.

“Obviously I saw that it was going in and I just let it go,” said Kessel. “I thought about touching it right away, then I thought no, I’ll let it go. It’s not a big deal, right? Let Mase have it.”

Kessel’s play — or non-play — raised obvious questions about the chemistry inside the dressing room. And while the players all said they get along and that this is one of the tighter groups they have been a part of, Carlyle said it was a cliché answer.

“I just think if you went into every dressing room you’d get a pretty standard answer: ‘We have a great group of guys here,’ ” the head coach said. “It takes about 20 games before you really know what kind of team you have inside the dressing room, because it’s obviously easier to get along with your neighbour when things are going well. But when things are going tough …”